The Easter Bunny showed up on schedule, that's the headline story. My peer group members either believe in this strange creature or are too smart to openly admit otherwise. Too much is at risk, particularly those devilishly tasty Cadbury creme eggs.
And this time there were Eggs Benedict and coffee too, not for my peers but for me.
This of course means spring has arrived and the restlessness that causes chaos in Miami Beach and Cancun stirs here as well, though a bit more restrained. For me, it's time to depart on a road trip over the coming week, down the coast to Southern California.
My companions will hike, bike and swim. I'll contemplate and -- assuming strong enough Internet access -- post here to Facebook as always.
The mere experience of moving about feels revolutionary to many after being cooped up at home for a year. Mental health experts worry about how we will act now we can encounter each other in the flesh again.
Will we party like it's the Roaring Twenties? Will there be a return to the Barbary Coast days?
If you visit San Francisco, you can visit what's left of the Barbary district, which is sort of split between North Beach and the financial section. When I was editor of the city magazine 7x7 that launched in 2001, I commissioned lots of stories on local history.
One of those was the origin of the martini, perhaps America's favorite cocktail. As near as my fearless reporter was able to determine, a gold miner who had struck it rich headed to San Francisco when he stopped at a bar in Martinez, where the barkeep crafted the drink.
The miner loved it, called it the Martinez, and headed for the Barbary Coast, then the most raucous part of a raucous town. He described the drink to a bartender there, where the modern name apparently emerged.
In the startup business we would call that a founder's myth, and you gotta admit it's a pretty good one. In the years since I've heard a few other origin stories for the martini, but being partisan to the city by the Bay, I'm sticking with this one.
After all, history belongs to whoever is paying for the next round.
We published all sorts of fascinating tidbits during my brief tenure at 7x7, which was named for the seven-by-seven (49) square-mile footprint of San Francisco. The 49ers refer to the gold miners, the football team and a 49-mile scenic drive for tourists.
BTW, if you ever strike out for San Francisco, the best view of the city is up on Twin Peaks, looking east. You can see all the way down Market Street to the Ferry Building, and well beyond.
As it turned out, free martinis were one of the main benefits of editing 7x7, though not for a celebratory reason. We launched the magazine one week before the 9/11 terrorist attacks. As the tourist trade here collapsed, we struggled to publish, deferring our salaries and accepting "trade' instead of cash from advertisers.
That trade basically meant all the free food and drink we could have wanted in San Francisco's best restaurants -- night after night. As we navigated our way through this debauchery, it often felt as if the Barbary Coast was alive and well once again, at least for our merry band of revelers.
Despite the odd circumstances, I worked with a great group of editors, writers and designers, and it was my best chance to learn the city's rich history first-hand. Among the people I met was a young city council member named Gavin Newsom.
He was a winning young fellow and after our meeting I received a hand-written thank you note from him. "Now there's a well-brought up young man," I thought to myself. But in the end, I had to leave 7x7 so to earn an actual paycheck again.
Thus when a faculty member from Stanford told me I should apply to be a visiting professor there, I did. The next chapter of my career started down there on the Farm in the fall of 2002.
But returning to where we started, with the Easter Bunny, Sunday was my two-year-old granddaughter Bettina's first Easter egg hunt. When she grabbed one, she toddled over to her father and proclaimed, "'I found an egg!' Bettina gasped."
Definitely a writer. Already referring to herself in the third person.
***
The news:
* U.S. emerges as main engine for global economic recovery -- With free spending by the Biden administration driving a nascent U.S. boom, demand this year is expected to spill well beyond U.S. borders, making the nation the largest single contributor to global growth for the first time since 2005, according to Oxford Economics. (WaPo)
* How Trump Steered Supporters Into Unwitting Donations -- Online donors were guided into weekly recurring contributions. Demands for refunds spiked. Complaints to banks and credit card companies soared. But the money helped keep Donald Trump’s struggling campaign afloat. (NYT)
* Arizona Republicans’ desperate crusade to find nonexistent voter fraud (WaPo)
* Virus Variants Threaten to Draw Out the Pandemic, Scientists Say -- Declining infection rates overall masked a rise in more contagious forms of the coronavirus. Vaccines will stop the spread, if Americans postpone celebration just a bit longer. (NYT)
* Phone numbers, personal data for 533 million Facebook users exposed online, report says (WaPo)
* Leaker says they are offering private details of 500 million Facebook users (Reuters)
* Tesla, Facebook, FedEx Hired Through the Pandemic as Others Shed Jobs -- Amazon’s hiring spree overshadows dramatic cuts and hiring elsewhere in a year of big workforce changes. (WSJ)
* The Ghosts of Brooks Brothers -- After the retailer filed for bankruptcy one couple was left with a warehouse full of abandoned mannequins and a hefty price tag to dispose of it. (NYT)
* Vast archives at JFK Library help bring ‘Hemingway’ to life (AP)
* Floods, landslides, kill dozens in Indonesia and East Timor (Reuters)
* More than 300 homes in the Tampa Bay area have been ordered to be evacuated after a toxic water leak. (BBC)
* With Swarms of Ships, Beijing Tightens Its Grip on South China Sea -- After building artificial islands, China is using large fleets of ostensibly civilian boats to press other countries’ vessels out of disputed waters. (NYT)
* Two transatlantic pen pals have been reunited after a wait of more than 70 years. In 1950, 11-year-old Jim Johnston from Belfast responded to an advert in a children's magazine about pen pals. He was soon put in touch with an American boy who was a similar age - Fred Heard from Klamath Falls, Oregon. (BBC)
* The Mud Lake Mafia fantasy baseball team started its 21st season in the Champs of Summer league. The Mafia has never finished higher than second place. (DW)
* Pizza Slice Only Has One Pepperoni (The Onion)
***
I guess this is the place, inside I see your face, Martini
I walk into the room, position I assume, Martini (One second)
You put a record on, I hear my favourite song, Martini
I need us to imagine that like wow, oh-oh, Martini
I need us to march, right here, right now, oh-oh, Martini
I need us to imagine that like wow, oh-oh, Martini (Right)
So let me be the accident that's bound to happen, Martini
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